Four days mega event of Arabian Travel Mart has started today at Dubai. Pakistan is showcasing its rich tourism potential along with 160 countries from around the world in this expo.
Dawn News media report on tour guides training event from 18 to 31 March 2023. It was jointly organized by PTDC, STFP, COTHM, PUM Netherlands, DTS and other partner organisations
Aftab Rana in his keynote speech on the topic of "Sustainable Mountain Tourism" on the occasion of International Mountain Day Conference highlighted various challenges which are raising head in our mountain areas due to mushroom growth of tourism. He also presented case of best practices to overcome these challenges. Click on this video to listen his full speech.
World Tourism Day 2022 celebrated at PNCA Islamabad
We are pleased to announce that Sustainable Tourism Foundation Pakistan has signed a MoU with World Federation of Tour Guides Associations (WFTGA), Austria-Pakistan Association (APA), Pakistan Business and Professional Council (PBPC), Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation Pakistan (PTDC), Discover Pakistan TV Channel and Kohsar University Murree (KUM) to start a capacity building program for the tour guides in Pakistan.
The purpose of this collaboration is to create and an effective working relationship between the partner organizations for the promotion of sustainable tourism and development of skills of tourist guides in Pakistan. Under this collaboration various training courses as per the standards of WFTGA will be organized in Pakistan to bridge the gap in the availability of trained and certified tour guides in Pakistan.
STFP is working closely with public and private sector stakeholders at national, regional and international levels to facilitate and promotion the exchange of knowledge, experiences and ideas on best practices of sustainable tourism. Over the last 15 years, STFP has done pioneering work in the promotion of responsible and sustainable tourism in Pakistan. One of the special area of intervention has been the human resource development for tourism in Pakistan. STFP regularly organizes training courses for the tour guides and so far hundreds of young people have participated in these training courses which are now serving in the tourism industry as tour guides and tour operators.
STFP would like to thanks all the partner organizations of the MoU for joining hands to work collaboratively for this important initiative.
Consultative Workshop on Tourism Held at Ramada Hotel Islamabad
Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) in collaboration with United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) organized a two days consultative workshop on tourism at Islamabad on 27 and 28 August. The purpose of this workshop was to develop a strategic plan and a roadmap for the promotion of tourism in the country. Syed Zulfiqar Abbas Bukhari, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis; Human Resource Development and Chairman of National Tourism Coordination Board (NTCB) was Chief Guest of inaugural session. More than 50 tourism and hospitality sector experts from public and private sector participated in this two days consultative workshop and provided their input to formulate recommendations in eight working groups to develop tourism infrastructure, investment promotion, regulatory and policy reforms, marketing and branding, promotion of adventure tourism, culture and archaeological tourism, religious tourism, sustainable and ecotourism in Pakistan.
To give boost to tourism in Pakistan, recently Federal Government has introduced E-visa policy and has established a National Tourism Coordination Board (NTCB) which has representation of key federal departments and all the provinces and private sector. Pakistan has numerous opportunities to exploit different tourism products. Now there is a need to draft a plan which is focused on the systemic and sustainable development of tourism in Pakistan.
The 2nd meeting of Tourism Think Tank of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province was held at Hill View Hotel Islamabad on 11 January 2019. The meeting was chaired by Minister of Tourism, Atif Khan and over 30 members including experts on tourism, tour operators, hoteliers, media experts and officials from different departments attended this meeting. In his opening comments, the honourable Minister briefed the house about various steps which his government is taking to develop and promote tourism in KP province. In the next session five sub group focal persons made presentations on the thematic areas of Events and Festivals, touristic activities, branding and marketing, tourism master plan and regulatory and institutional reforms in tourism sector.
Aftab Rana, President of STFP who is also the member of KP Tourism Think Tank attended this meeting and gave a presentation on the importance of regulatory and institutional reforms to bring quality in tourist services and safeguard tourism’s natural and cultural assets through the promotion of responsible and sustainable tourism in Pakistan. At present, our tourism related laws and acts are outdated and they are being implemented and enforced in a very poor manner. Due to which our natural and cultural assets are under threat because of mushroom growth of tourism especially in mountainous areas and on the other hand there is complete absence of quality standards in the services of tourism and hospitality sector. The quality assurance is the backbone of tourism trade, he recommended following steps to bring improvement in the regulatory mechanism for our tourism and hospitality sector:-
• In depth review of all existing laws relating to tourism and hospitality industry should be conducted on urgent basis.
• The existing three acts encompassing hotels, restaurants, travel agents and tour guides must be re-evaluated, updated and rewritten where necessary to meet the present international standards.
• International best practices shoul
STFP conducted a 7 days training working for tour guides from Chitral Valley from 05 to 11 November 2018. This training was organized on the request of KP Directorate of Tourism Services by Sustainable Tourism Foundation Pakistan (STFP) at Pamir River Inn, Chitral.
A batch of 26 trainees including 7 females participated in this training workshop. This was the first time that 6 female candidates from Kalash community also participated in a tour guides training. Aftab Rana and Arif Tufial conducted this training workshop which was based on sessions on procedural knowledge and skills, demonstrations, practical and role plays with special emphasis on ethics of environment and culture friendly tourism.
After the opening of Lowari Tunnel it is expected that there will be increase in the number of tourists to Chitral and this capacity building initiative will be helpful in providing quality services of trained local tour guides to the domestic and foreign visitors. STFP strongly feels that the role of trained local tour guides is very important to promote sustainable tourism as well as to protect the natural environment and sensitive culture of this area because the over tourism may impact negatively if appropriate measures are not adopted to manage tourism in Chitral in near future. This particular training course is a one such effort but there is also need to develop a comprehensive tourism management strategy based on the values and principles of sustainable and responsible tourism.
There is a big issue of quality of services in the hotels in our mountain areas. In order to bring quality in the services of hotels and achieve better customers’ satisfaction recently four training workshops were arranged at Skardu, Kachura, Hunza and Gilgit.
Under SMEA Project of USAID, Aftab Rana, President of STFP conducted these training workshops at Skardu, Kachura, Hunza and Giligit during the month of October 2018. So far more than 100 hoteliers from Gilgit-Baltistan region have benefited from these training workshops. There is a big issue of quality of services in the hotels in our mountain areas and these trainings will be definitely helpful to sensitize the managers of these hotels to bring quality in their services. In the next phase, training sessions for staff of these hotels in front office management, housekeeping, F&B Services and food production skills will be arranged.
Tree Plantation Drive on Earth Day 2018
The month of April has been extremely eventful and busy for the team of STFP. The major event was a tree plantation driver across Pakistan on the occasion of Earth Day 2018 under our Mission Green Pakistan Project.
In order to celebrate Earth Day 2018, STFP’s “Mission Green Pakistan” arranged tree plantation events at Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Multan, Hyderabad, Quetta and Karachi from 22nd to 27th April. More than 1000 saplings of native species and fruit trees were planted at various secure locations in above cities. A children painting competition on trees protection, awareness talk was also part of this event. This activity was jointly organized by STFP, Telenor Pakistan. Large number on volunteers from STFP, Telenor Pakistan and students from respective institutions also participated in this tree plantation event.
STFP would like to thank all the team members and volunteers for their support and dedicated efforts to make Pakistan a green and clean country and a beautiful tourist destination. Especially our team members Arif Tufail, Talib Fatah, Misbah Ishaq, Javed Iqbal, Nasir Khokar, Fauzia Ayaz, Yahya Musakhel, Altaf ur Rehman, Saif ur Raheem and Shamshad Ahmed made extra ordinary efforts to make these tree plantation events highly successful.
